It had nothing to do with augury.
I held the cell phone high into moonlight,
playing the cry of a tawny owl. Merlin obliged,
but it also had nothing to do with magic.
It was data. The magician an app.
The recording stored in cobalt and nickel
chambers where birds never roost.
But I didn’t think—I wanted to fill an
absence. I called to her three times. Four.
And then the sweep of outstretched wings,
dark figure above me, up, into a cypress
where she settled, and cried. What was I
thinking. Who am I to lure a wild thing like prey,
mislead her, with the stolen song of another—
as the hunter does. I did not have a gun.
I have a mind that operates like one.
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